The main purpose of this study was to empirically examine Chen and Starosta’s Model of Intercultural Sensitivity and reproduce a valid scale in the Taiwanese cultural context, using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Results indicated that Chen and Starosta’s five-factor model of intercultural sensitivity (IS) did not fit the Taiwanese cultural context. Instead, a four-factor model of IS was created using an exploratory factor analysis. The four factors were based on the 13 items of 24-item Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS) formulated by Chen and Starosta. The reliability coefficient was .801, demonstrating high internal consistency. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed again to determine the construct validity of the alternative model of IS. Since cultural differences may influence the factor structure of a test, using both EFA and CFA can methodologically provide a meaningful explanation for replication studies. This study proposes an alternative model of the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale that is a better fit with Taiwanese culture by reinterpreting Chen and Starosta’s ISS.

The FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) circuits contain programmable logic components and are increasingly popular in implementing the applications for obtaining and processing signals. FPGA represents a modern development trend in digital electronics. The integration in the work with students of this trend is a difficult task, but also useful, because many students face problems when they must use a design environment. The application of FPGA technology can be useful to students either for the laboratory work on advanced topics, or for obtaining skills to use an industry standard design environment. The purpose of this paper is to conduct studies on the need to integrate the FPGA digital electronics trend in the laboratory didactic activity of the students. As case study, we present the design of a control circuit and its implementation in a FPGA, i.e. on a Basys2 board with Xilinx programming environment.

The purpose of this research study is to examine the impact of Computer Studies among teachers and students of secondary schools in Umuahia North Local Government Area of Abia State, especially as it affects the teaching and learning process. The authors adopted a descriptive survey design for this study using four research questions which were formulated based on the purpose of the research. The results of the study indicate that Computer Studies has positive impact in the teaching and learning process in secondary schools in Umuahia North Local Government Area of Abia State, Nigeria. From the findings, the computer literacy level of the students was found to be low while that of the teachers was slightly higher than that of the students. The results of the study also show that equipment and infrastructure such as computers and other information and communication technology (ICT) facilities are also needed in schools to facilitate the acquisition of basic computer skills among teachers and students in secondary schools and thereby increase their computer literacy level.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has significantly improved the educational environment to higher degrees. The teaching and learning methodologies have been changed to greater extends to motivate the instructors and learners. The learner’s satisfaction on these ICT innovations depends on their impact in day to day knowledge gaining processes. This paper discusses some major ICT factors that influence the Omani learners and their corresponding satisfaction levels. This research also identified that these technological innovations motivate the learners in self-learning and in future continuing education. The study identified that the overall significant development educational processes and encouragement in the learning processes by information and communication technology innovations have higher impacts on the learners’ satisfaction.

This paper aims to review a proposed Quality Assurance system (QA) which suggests developing the internal quality assurance system of academic programs at the College of Computer and Information Sciences (CCIS), Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University (PNU), Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), by replacing the existing paper-based QA System into a web-based system. In general, the QA system will work as: providing users the required NCAAA (National Commission for Academic Accreditation and Assessment) reports' forms to be filled. Then, the proposed QA system will gather forms and generates completed reports. At the same time, it provides them to the decision makers. The proposed QA system will allow decision makers to approve reports and view gathered information in many views in which will facilitate the making decision processes in continuing improvement of the educational processes and outcomes. Also, QA system can be extended and applied to other PNU colleges. After that, it can be applied to all KSA universities.

K-means algorithm is one of the most popular algorithms for data clustering. With this algorithm, data of similar types are tried to be clustered together from a large data set with brute force strategy which is done by repeated calculations. As a result, the computational complexity of this algorithm is very high. Several researches have been carried out to minimize this complexity. This paper presents the result of our research, which proposes a modified version of k-means algorithm with an improved technique to divide the data set into specific numbers of clusters with the help of several check point values. It requires less computation and has enhanced accuracy than the traditional k-means algorithm as well as some modified variant of the traditional k-Means.

Software engineering (SE) field is considered as a backbone of software industry. Students suffer many problems and difficulties when they approach to industry due to the old contents of SE course, lack of practice and inability in the subject area. The main reason of the SE course problems is the lack of coordination or gap between software industry and academia. This paper proposed a novel solution to enhance SE curriculum to bridge the gap between industry and academia. The proposed solution will assist students at optimal level in their professional careers to achieve goals of SE course. Survey research methodology is used to evaluate the proposed solution and the results of data analysis are highly encouraging. It is anticipated that the universities will find this research helpful to improve the quality of SE course.

The influx of Big Data on the Internet has become a question for many businesses of how they can benefit from big data and how to use cloud computing to make it happen. The magnitude at which data is getting generated day by day is hard to believe and is beyond the scope of a human’s capability to view and analyze it and hence there is an imperative need for data management and analytical tools to leverage this big data. Companies require a fine blend of technologies to collect, analyze, visualize, and process large volume of data. Big Data initiatives are driving urgent demand for algorithms to process data, accentuating challenges around data security with minimal impact on existing systems. In this paper, we present many existing cloud storage systems and query processing techniques to process the large scale data on the cloud. The paper also explores the challenges of big data management on the cloud and related factors that encourage the research work in this field.